Twitter’s Soon-To-Be Algorithmic Timeline and Other Updates

Continuing our trend of company news mashups, we take a look at what’s going on at Twitter on Monday.

Twitter to Introduce Facebook-Style Algorithmic Timeline

We know how Facebook is deeply interested in artificial intelligence. Why? Because their news feed relies on the technology to prioritize updates based on what the program thinks we want to see. It is probably one of the many reasons Facebook has overtaken Twitter in terms of user growth and user engagement.

Twitter might soon follow suit. A report emerged online that Twitter will be introducing an algorithmic timeline, much like Facebook. These reports have been surfacing quite a lot in the past few months, considering Twitter has pretty much stagnated in terms of user growth over the past year.

The new timeline will tell users about the tweets which were posted while the user was away. However, when the user refreshes the tweet stream, the tweets will return to their normal chronological order.

The internet erupted with users unhappy about the soon-to-be released update, with many high-profile users even threatening to quit Twitter altogether. Plus, the #RIPTwitter tag began to emerge as the top trending hashtag in the U.S. as users began to voice their opinions on the microblogging platform.

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, posted an update responding to the #RIPTwitter tag: "Twitter is live. Twitter is real-time. Twitter is about who & what you follow. And Twitter is here to stay! By becoming more Twitter-y," said Dorsey.

Twitter Shuts Down 125,000 Terrorist Accounts

With Google introducing updates to their Adwords platform by allowing nonprofit organizations to display ads to searches related to terrorism and radicalization, Twitter has stated that it has suspended more than 125,000 terror-related accounts since mid-2015. The company also increased the teams which review account activity and suspicious behavior.

"As the nature of the terrorist threat has changed, so has our ongoing work in this area. We have increased the size of the teams that review reports, reducing our response time significantly. We also look into other accounts similar to those reported and leverage proprietary spam-fighting tools to surface other potentially violating accounts for review by our agents," the company said.

Dorsey’s Other Job at Disney

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, is eyeing to renew his membership at the Disney Board of Directors when the company will hold its 2016 annual board meeting on March 3 in Chicago. Dorsey has been on the board since December 2013. He was paid $295,050 as compensation for being a Disney Board Member in 2015.

GIF Support and Search

Since Twitter is the unofficial ‘GIF home of the Internet’, the company is testing an update on its platform to select users that allows users to select GIFs depending on their moods and emotions.